Patch 5.3 Dev Interview
Today we are taking a look at an interview on ArenaJunkies with Ghostcrawler and Holinka.

Prior to Patch 5.3, players would often complain about how quickly they died in PvP if they didn't have PvP gear.

The idea behind adding PvP Power was to give PvP gear an extra stat that didn't count towards its item level, not making it the only good stat in PvP. The changes made in Patch 5.3 make other stats a good choice as well when gemming your gear.

Patch 5.3 also addresses concerns that PvE trinkets would be BiS for PvP by increasing duration of procs and reducing the effect, making them less powerful for bursting players down. Trinkets above item level 496 are also scaled down in Battlegrounds, Rated Battlegrounds, and Arenas, along with your other gear.

More cosmetic rewards are coming in the upcoming patches and next expansion, as well as the potential for some rewards that are not just cosmetic.

Now that you can't upgrade PvP gear anymore, the developers will try to find something else for players to spend excess Conquest Points on.

Spells doing different amounts of damage in PvP and PvE is a rare thing and only used in cases where there will be a large difference because it is a lot to keep track of for less hardcore players that don't keep up with all of the changes.

Making a Warlocks gateway able to be killed was done to make sure there was a way to counter it, and make matches less binary. If a Warlock got a gateway then the match played differently than if the Warlock was unable to make one initially.

Patch 5.2 tried to give Rogues more survivability and more attractive talents, such as Shuriken Toss, Mark for Death, and Cloak and Dagger. These were a little bit too much, and Patch 5.3 brought them more in line with other talents while keeping the survivability changes.

The changes to Hunter pet CC were caused by Hunters having a little bit too much CC, especially Beast Mastery Hunters.

Warriors were too good in the beginning of the season and saw some hotfixes to address the issue. However, these hotfixes weren't enough, so in Patch 5.2 some larger nerfs were made. These ended up being a little bit too strong.

The devs end up with burst being dominant because they don't want a match that goes on forever with no one able to kill anyone until the healers run out of mana. They often err on the side of too much burst, but try hard not to overcompensate.

Shaman Kor'kron Commanders' Crackling Fury will now only increase in damage by 50% each jump, down from 200%.

Warrior Kor'kron Commanders will now only cast Titanic Thunderclap when there are enemies within 10 yards.

Some Kor'kron Commander abilities will no longer target or affect pets and totems.

Fixed an issue where Overturned Caravans were despawning earlier than intended.

Brawler's Guild

Challenge Card quests can now be completed while in a raid. Note that credit for defeating a boss will not be shared amongst party or raid members.

Anthracite will now reset properly when a player dies or leaves the arena and can no longer be attacked by players spectating the fight.

Bug Fixes

Achievement: Waste Not, Want Not should now be properly awarded to players that satisfied all but the Cooldown Power-Up requirement.

Sound effects should no longer be cut out in areas with a large number of ambient sounds.

Fixed an issue where some sounds were not playing correctly during boss fights.

Fixed an issue where the raid warning sound was not playing correctly.

Blue Posts

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

Valor Points Catch Up
That’s a reasonable and logical argument but I kind of agree with Máz here, in the sense that we can’t compare Conquest to Valor as if they were exactly in the same league, they’re quite different.

The conquest catch up lets you get some extra points in order to buy some initial Tyrannical pieces of gear in the middle of the season, the only other alternative would be to farm honor and get Malevolent or craft some blue gear.

In PvE, there are already plenty of other alternatives for “catching up” in terms of gear without having to waste any Valor Points, there are Heroic Scenarios, LFR, Challenge Modes, and even Arenas and RBGs… because PvP gear is actually decent to step into PvE since PvP stats like PvP Power are out of the ilvl budget.

Even though the ilvl of all of this gear will be lower than normal mode raiding gear or valor gear, they provide great upgrades at zero cost to those who’ve been away for some time, allowing them to quickly catch up with the current PvE content a bit faster.

But, like I said, I still find it a perfectly reasonable argument, and maybe devs can consider it for future updates, first let’s see how the PvP catch up works out for everyone and we’ll build upon and think about other possibilities from there.

I think this is more a question of how fast do we want PvE players to catch up with current content, and not if we want them to catch up at all, because there are already plenty of ways for them to do that. (Blue Tracker / Official Forums)

Blue Tweets

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

Reputation / QuestingOr look at dailies. Blizz removed 25 daily limit, people burned out on it, doing ALL dailies every day.
Agreed that removing daily limit was a mistake. Not sure we made the right call with 10 vs. 25. (Source)Why restrict people from running 100 dailies every day if they want to just because others don't want to?
Huge challenge for us. "Don't nanny me" vs. "Don't make me do all of this content." Very hard to solve. (Source) But you're not 'making' anyone do anything. People who invest more time and effort get more rewards. Why is that a problem?
That's certainly one side of it. The other is players who feel like the game asks so much of them that they can't compete at all. (Source)

if you bring back limits on dailies, make them weekly limits, not daily limits, some of us like to grind out stuff in one day
I don't know that we need quest limits. Overall when we try to "save players from themselves" it can backfire. (Source)

so only one option that devs think is best > multiple options for players? You do realize that players can choose for themself
That's not what I said. I said if there are multiple ways to earn the same reward, players will take the most efficient. (Source)
We try to discourage that because it's not fun to do the same thing over and over. (Source)
And we try to discourage it by putting different rewards in different activities. (Source)Then why the dailies? The essence of doing the same thing over and over.
The hope was that you would not do the same dailies over and over, but the reward system didn't reinforce that behavior. (Source)
E.g. you could have chosen GL one day and Klaxxi the next, but since GL unlocked other factions, it felt mandatory. (Source)
If your goal is valor or lesser charms, you honestly have a lot of options (as it should be). (Source)"Which dailies will I do?" isn't options. It's dailies. No matter how appealing you try to make them. They're dailies.
Very few players cap valor and charms every single week. They still make progress over time. (Source)
Very dedicated and / or hardcore players might, but they are also the ones who want more and more stuff to do. (Source)
If you hate them that much, just don't do them. Yes, you might be a few ilevels behind your friends. Maybe it's worth it. (Source)crap answer. Maybe Mr. Heroic raider doesn't need valor gear, but some of us lesser fools do.
But why do you *need* valor gear? And even if you do, you can still earn it even if you skip dailies completely. (Source)

With respect, by that logic, you shouldn't add new classes and races. They take time away from the older ones.
Some truth to that, but ultimately I think there is also a player expectation that we will add news ones from time to time. (Source)

Fan Art
Over on Reddit, ngk08 shared some nice panorama screenshots with a Photoshop filter applied.

Removing daily limits WAS a good idea. If you decide to do 540 dailies in a day, that is not blizzards fault.

It partially is. If they don't put in certain limits to gameplay, it may become the expectation among players that everyone needs to maximize their completion of dailies and rep grinds in order to be competitive. That in turn becomes the norm among players, and everyone gets burned out because they wonder how they can ever keep up with all the content in front of them, which was not the intent of the designers. When we stop following the devs' vision for gameplay and progression, that's when they need to step in and add some barriers to put us back on the right track.

They have just as much of a responsibility to limit our gameplay as they do to make it unlimited. The question isn't whether or not to limit gameplay, it's when and how much to do so.

The devs end up with burst being dominant because they don't want a match that goes on forever with no one able to kill anyone until the healers run out of mana. They often err on the side of too much burst, but try hard not to overcompensate.

Strangely enough that is still how many healer/dps vs healer/dps fights play out. Seems any team with a brain always has a saving CC/peel in burst situations. Healers are very hard to OOM so we get really long matches.

It partially is. If they don't put in certain limits to gameplay, it may become the expectation among players that everyone needs to maximize their completion of dailies and rep grinds in order to be competitive. That in turn becomes the norm among players, and everyone gets burned out because they wonder how they can ever keep up with all the content in front of them, which was not the intent of the designers. When we stop following the devs' vision for gameplay and progression, that's when they need to step in and add some barriers to put us back on the right track.

They have just as much of a responsibility to limit our gameplay as they do to make it unlimited. The question isn't whether or not to limit gameplay, it's when and how much to do so.

The problem they've mentioned is that if you do put in limits, it causes people to feel like that limit is the goal and doing less than that is falling behind. If you don't do all 25 dailies each day (if that limit was still around), you're behind. If you don't cap valor every week, you're behind. Without the limits, many of those players may have been content doing fewer dailies or earning less valor each week.

The problem they've mentioned is that if you do put in limits, it causes people to feel like that limit is the goal and doing less than that is falling behind. If you don't do all 25 dailies each day (if that limit was still around), you're behind. If you don't cap valor every week, you're behind. Without the limits, many of those players may have been content doing fewer dailies or earning less valor each week.

But on the flip side, without a limit who's to say where that cap falls? The world first race, heroic and normal raiders suddenly feel forced to do every possible quest available every day, because if they don't, they fall behind. That's a player problem, which the old daily cap used to solve by saying "You can't do them all. You can only do this many a day." Had they kept the daily cap, but removed old dailies taking away from that cap, I can see this method working well. (I can also see that being somewhat of a design issue, but still.)

Also, with the no-limit thing... How many dungeons did people expect to do in Wrath, during the ICC patch to earn Triumph in a single day? (Hint: There was no expected amount, but if it was any less than "All of them" then you're wrong.)

It partially is. If they don't put in certain limits to gameplay, it may become the expectation among players that everyone needs to maximize their completion of dailies and rep grinds in order to be competitive. That in turn becomes the norm among players, and everyone gets burned out because they wonder how they can ever keep up with all the content in front of them, which was not the intent of the designers. When we stop following the devs' vision for gameplay and progression, that's when they need to step in and add some barriers to put us back on the right track.

They have just as much of a responsibility to limit our gameplay as they do to make it unlimited. The question isn't whether or not to limit gameplay, it's when and how much to do so.

The problem is they severely limited gameplay at the same time they unleashes the cork of the daily limit.

Prior to this expansion, you wanted to hit Valor cap. Ok. Are you a raider? Grats, you probably hit it just doing the content you want to do. Do you want to do it faster? Queue up for 7 heroic 5 mans and get it done early in the week.

This expansion they nerfed the other ways, and just made it so daily grinding was the only way to get it done fast. This was their mistake. You keep the other things the same, you remove the idea of forced dailies that gate to other factions so people can do what they want to do, and things are infinitely better.

It's the same way that this faster content thing is killing some guilds. There's a happy medium between "Not having new content for months after most guilds have killed things" of last expansion to "We're releasing new content faster than most guilds can kill everything" of this expansion. The former burns out only the most advanced guilds, and the latter burns out everyone else as you raid an entire expansion cycle without getting a chance to take a breather. Blizzard has been, and apparently will always be, very very terrible at establishing any middle ground in anything they do.

didnt have to many issues with it and our raid last night.. maybe 1 out of like ~15attempts

Originally Posted by hawtlol

How about they focus on creating actual content rather than keep adding daily quests with every patch.

Do tell me where you find all these new dailys? i found maybe 2 or so.
They added: New brawlers (Content)
New heroic scenarios (Pshht thats content to)
and some other things, pretty sure that outnumbers the like few daily quests theyve added

Do tell me where you find all these new dailys? i found maybe 2 or so.
They added: New brawlers (Content)
New heroic scenarios (Pshht thats content to)
and some other things, pretty sure that outnumbers the like few daily quests theyve added

While they added some stuff they still added Barren's dailies with this patch. Had the Thunder of Isle dailies last patch, operation shield dailies in 5.1 and all of the terrible dailies they've had since release.

While they added some stuff they still added Barren's dailies with this patch. Had the Thunder of Isle dailies last patch, operation shield dailies in 5.1 and all of the terrible dailies they've had since release.

Maybe its just me, but I dont see a real difference between running dailies all the time and running dungeons all the time as in previous expansions. And at this point, do you really need to do them all, every day? Not even close. You can get all the charms you need doing a couple a day, especially since you get them from NPC kills. Hardly "ITS TAKING ALL MY TIME!!"